Blog Description

This is a blog for the family and friends of Collin Park. He will be serving a two year mission in the Sierra Leone Freetown Mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, he left on January 24, 2013. While Collin is on his mission his Mom will be posting pictures and letters as she gets them, the content will be straight from Collin (unless otherwise noted) - spelling and punctuation will be corrected of course! Commentary and clarification may be added by his Mom as needed.UPDATE: Collin's mission was split in half! The Sierra Leone Mission included the country of Liberia when Collin first left. As of July 1, 2013, the mission was split along the border and the new mission created: the Liberia, Monrovia Mission. Collin will never see the country of Sierra Leone. He has been in Monrovia Liberia since he left the MTC in Ghana.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Because of the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, Liberia and Sierra Leone Missions were evacuated on August 4, 2014 and missionaries were reassigned to different missions. Collin was reassigned to the Salt Lake City Central Mission.

Monday, August 05, 2013

August 5, 2013

These weeks are going by way to fast...

This week was a history setting week for me and my companion
and our area. To start, we had a TON of lessons this week. We were
literally teaching lessons all day long, every day, not a whole lot of bounces
either. This week we had more lessons than I have ever taught in my
area. We have never really had a
lot of members come with us to teach, but Friday and Saturday Joseph Kumeh said
he'll come with us. It was a good experience for him. His family
has been in the church for over 20 years, so he knows the principals we teach,
but he just needs to learn how to teach. It was one thing that I
struggled with for a long time when I first got here. but I worked and I got
better. It’s the same with Joseph. We are getting him a Preach My
Gospel book so he will be able to learn more.

Young men who haven’t gone on a mission and are reading
this: GO AROUND WITH THE MISSIONARIES!!!!!!

Since the new mission was created not much has
changed. We found out that the
branch that I am serving in, they are trying to make this one of the
first wards. We have been assigned one of the mission counselors to meet
with the branch every week and do training. This will be a good thing for
everyone. I feel like we can do it, just that we need some help and
motivation to do it.

Yesterday (Sunday) we had a man walk
into the church and sit down. None of recognized him, so I went and
talked with him. He's actually our neighbor and had heard a lot of things
about our church. From what he said, he doesn’t like to believe things
people say unless he sees it, so he decided to come and see. When Sacrament
meeting was almost over he leans over to me and says that everything that he
has seen and heard thus far, was all good and that he was really
impressed. We took his information and will be sitting with him this
week. People like that don’t always happen to come our way but when they
do it’s always fun!

In my apartment we have several things that we do every
week. On P-day (preparation day), we wash and clean like usual.
Washing by hand sucks! Go hug your washing machine. Drying takes all day
and into the night. Go hug your dryer. Once the clothes are washed
and the apartment is clean, we eat. EveryMonday and only Monday we boil eggs and eat
boiled egg sandwiches. It may not seem like a whole lot but it’s always
fun for us. The little things mean so much.

LIB is too sweet. I love it here. Tinker Village
is an amazing branch. Home away from home.

I love all my friends and family at home and around the
world.

Elder Park

The White African

T.I.A.

From an extra email the same morning:

I still haven’t gotten a package since late April. Letters
are never opened.

Transfers come probably on the 18th, lots of
people will move. Some areas will be white washed (meaning that the
missionaries who know the area will be moved, so the new ones won’t know anyone
or about anyone). That’s next to impossible to deal with here because
there are no addresses and not everyone has phones. It'll be very
interesting.

As far as changing, I have changed physically and in all
the other typical ways a missionary changes. I am back to where I was physically
at the beginning of senior year. I have been working out every morning,
even today I have done about 160 pushups along with sits ups of every
kind. Tell Derek I’m coming for him!!!!

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Elder Collin Park is serving a two year mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. He will be teaching the gospel of Jesus Christ in Sierre Leone and Liberia (West Africa) from January 2013 until January 2015.